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Sobering advice from two experts on how to prevent similiar fires

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To fight fires, we must change how they are perceived and change our mitigation efforts

Before I get into it, here’s the L.A. Times’ live coverage of these ongoing fires.

Wildfire expert Jack Cohen spent three days in 2019 instructing members of the Pacific Palisades community on how to protect their homes against the next wildfire.

A trip for the Montana resident that started with much hope faded quickly when Cohen realized his lessons were unlikely to be applied.

Fire historian Stephen Pyne also felt that despair kindle again this week watching the devastation wrought by Los Angeles fires.

The two have traveled the country providing fire prevention advice while earning the respect of fire agencies nationwide.

Yet, the duo spoke with my colleague Thomas Curwen not to wag an “I-told-you-so” finger, but to offer guidance during this critical time.

“I’m compelled to continue pursuing this issue because it is so solvable if we determine to do it,” Cohen said.

Here are some excepts from the full article.

Forget “wildland-urban interface”

When catastrophic fires occur, experts often blame the so-called wildland-urban interface, the vulnerable region on the perimeter of cities and suburbs where an abundance of vegetation in rugged terrain is susceptible to burning.

“The assumption is continually made that it’s the big flames” that cause widespread community destruction, Cohen said, “and yet the wildfire actually only initiates community ignitions largely with lofted burning embers.”

Experts attribute widespread devastation to wind-driven embers igniting spot fires two to three miles ahead of the established fire. Maps of the Eaton fire show seemingly random ignitions across Altadena.

“When you study the destruction in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, note what didn’t burn — unconsumed tree canopies adjacent to totally destroyed homes,” he said. “The sequence of destruction is commonly assumed to occur in some kind of organized spreading flame front — a tsunami of super-heated gases — but it doesn’t happen that way.

This fundamental misunderstanding has likewise led to a misunderstanding of prevention. No longer is it a matter of preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing “home-hardening” strategies — proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding — and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing.

Back in Chicago

In the aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 — 17,000 structures destroyed and more than 100,000 residents left homeless — city planners and local governments began to focus on fire protection engineering as a way of keeping cities safe.

As a result, Pyne said, “cities began to harden themselves against these terrible conflagrations and were successful. Arguably the last major urban fire in the U.S. was San Francisco in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake.”

Yet those defenses lapsed as the cities grew. Building codes failed to address the requirements of specific environments, and infrastructure was laid out without attending to potential hazard.

Pyne, who has written more than 30 books on the cultural and social effects of wildland and rural fires around the world, argues that many of the most disastrous fires of the last 30 years have been urban fires.

Think outside the pump

Southern California has always been subject to drought and Santa Ana winds, primary factors for today’s fires. And while climate change is increasing their frequency and severity, Pyne argues that a society dependent on fossil fuels plays a significant role as well.

“A fossil-fuel society remakes landscapes as well by affecting how humans organize agriculture, urban development, the placement of roads and power lines,” he said.

Popular wisdom, Pyne said, holds that “fire is something that happens once in a while. It’s seasonal. It’s nothing we really have to invest in systematically. It’s just an emergency that we need to be prepared for and then respond to.”

“I think we’re beyond that,” he said.

Be realistic

The most uncomfortable truth of the last few days has been how quickly firefighting efforts were overwhelmed and outmatched by the extreme fire conditions, Cohen said. L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone acknowledged there was simply not enough manpower for this emergency.

But, Cohen said, the problem extends beyond staffing.

Cohen calls it a sense of entitlement that we will be protected, a feeling that is reinforced by fire protection agencies, even when it’s unrealistic.

“We’re not recognizing, analyzing, questioning how we’re failing,” Cohen said. “We just think we need more airplanes and more helicopters flying 24 hours a day.”

“We don’t necessarily need a trillion-dollar program and a fire czar to get control of the fire problem,” Pyne said. “What we need are a thousand things that tweak the environment in favorable ways such that we can prevent these eruptions.”

For example, municipal and fire prevention agencies must give property owners advance — and continual — warnings to clear dead vegetation and to wet dry brush within 10 feet of the house with periodic, prolonged sprinklings.

For more on the discussion, check out the full article.

The week’s biggest stories

Helicopter aerial view of the Palisades fire burning above homes on Mandeville Canyon Road (bottom right) in Brentwood.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Movement of the blazes

Fire politics and investigations

The displaced

Fire notes

More big stories

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Column One

Column One is The Times’ home for narrative and long-form journalism. Here’s a great piece from this week:

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

For some, Altadena’s draw has been the seclusion it offers, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, straddling the line between urban and wild. For others, it’s been the community where Black residents sought refuge decades ago amid the legacy of defunct racial redlining. And then there has always been Altadena’s sense of freedom and creativity that gave rise to an artists’ enclave and The Bunny Museum.

More great reads

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.

For your weekend

There is no Sunday Funday this week. Here are some volunteering ideas and help for Sunday and beyond.

Going out

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L.A. Affairs

Get wrapped up in tantalizing stories about dating, relationships and marriage.

L.A. Affairs is off this week. Here is one of our favorite tales from 2024.

They met in their 40s, when Luis was teaching her daughter how to play guitar. Although she found him attractive, they were not on each other’s radars until I was nearly a year into her widowhood. A friend had invited me to one of his gigs, and I went. We got to talking and saw each other a few times over the next several weeks. What we thought might be a fling turned into a bona fide relationship. But would it last with a little fine tuning, or will creative difference prove too difficult to overcome?

Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team

Andrew J. Campa, reporter
Carlos Lozano, news editor

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